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[align=center]Why CEOs love Rwanda[/align]
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As a small African nation recovers from genocide, Google, Starbucks and Costco lend a hand. Fortune's Marc Gunther reports.
By Marc Gunther, Fortune senior writer
April 3 2007: 1:57 PM EDT[/align]

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It's not every day that an African head of state delivers a corporate endorsement at an annual shareholder meeting. But Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, did just that last week at Starbucks' meeting in Seattle.
Starbucks' chief executive, Jim Donald, introduced Kagame, who praised the $8-billion-a-year company. "Starbucks and Rwanda are extended family, very closely linked by the business we do together and the passion we share," Kagame said. His comments delivered welcome relief from the criticism aimed at Starbucks over a recent trademark dispute with Ethiopian coffee growers.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame addresses the annual Starbucks Corp. shareholders meeting in Seattle. Kagame spoke to shareholders for several minutes in the surprise visit.
Best known today for the 1994 genocide that killed 800,000 of its people, Rwanda is, thanks to Kagame, quietly building a new reputation in corporate America - as a business-friendly nation that wants to become a model of private sector development in Africa.
The 49-year-old Kagame, a rail-thin, bespectacled former guerilla fighter who has led Rwanda since 2000, lately has become an unlikely favorite of American CEOs. Last week, he had lunch at Google's campus in Mountain View, Ca., with senior executives including CEO Eric Schmidt; the Internet firm just announced plans to make its free Web-based software available in Rwanda.
Chasing the 'base of the pyramid'
Kagame had a lengthy dinner with Jim Sinegal, the CEO of Costco (Charts); the big retailer buys coffee from Rwanda and wants to do more business there. Last week, too, Terracom, Rwanda's leading phone company, hired an American-born CEO as it builds out what it says will be the fastest communications backbone in Africa. Senior executives at the wireless firm Alltel (Charts), the huge engineering and construction company Bechtel and clothing maker Columbia Sportswear (Charts) also have consulted with Rwandan officials.
An undervalued 'stock'
Why the attention to Rwanda, a land-locked country of about 9 million people about the size of of Maryland? It's no accident. Many of the corporate ties between the U.S. and Rwanda can be traced back to two Chicago-area businessmen: Joe Ritchie, the founder of an investment firm called Fox River Financial Resources, and his partner Dan Cooper. I met Ritchie and Cooper on a trip to Rwanda in 2005 with the evangelical minister and best-selling author Rick Warren.
Ritchie's not your typical midwestern businessman. He ran the world's largest commodities trading firm, broke a transcontinental speed record in his private plane, managed mission control for his friend and fellow adventurer, balloonist Steve Fossett, and, with his brother James, helped finance Afghan rebel fighters when they tried to overthrow the Taliban in the late 1990s. (The Ritchies grew up in Afghanistan, but that's another story.) Several years ago, Ritchie's daughter Maggie volunteered in Rwanda, after which he took a look for himself and came away very impressed.
Rwanda is known as the "Land of a Thousand Hills" but it was not the lush landscape that appealed to Ritchie. He and Cooper toured the country and met government and business leaders. They decided that Kagame was open, honest, business-savvy and, unlike some African leaders, serious about fighting corruption.
"We came away saying, this is the most undervalued 'stock' on the continent and maybe in the world," Cooper says. "Here's an African nation that's reaching out, not to governments so much, but to corporate America. They want to work. They want U.S. business to bring innovation to their country."
Coffee was the obvious place to start. A U.S.-backed program called PEARL (Partnership for Enhancing Agriculture in Rwanda Through Linkages) had been helping Rwanda's coffee growers to organize themselves, invest in new washing stations and dramatically improve the quality of their coffee. PEARL introduced Rwandan coffee growers to U.S. and European buyers of specialty coffee, including Sustainable Harvest Coffee of Portland, Oregon, Intelligentsia Coffee of Chicago and Vermont's Green Mountain Coffee, whose customers include McDonald's. Financed by the U.S. government's Agency for International Development, PEARL is led by agriculture specialists at Michigan State and Texas A & M.
Starbucks vs. Ethiopia
Dan Clay, director of MSU's Institute of International Agriculture, who has worked in Rwanda since 1979, says the specialty coffee business is growing fast. (In 2006, about a thousand metric tons of fully washed Rwanda coffee was sold into U.S. specialty and gourmet markets at prices averaging $2.00 per pound. Commodity coffee - the kind that Rwanda used to produce - sells for just 60 to 75 cents a pound.)
"The companies that are buying these top quality coffees are investing a lot in the communities and cooperative," Clay says. "They put a lot of their own time in, and they do some training."
Ritchie and Cooper have opened up bigger opportunities for the coffee growers by pitching Rwanda to Costco's Sinegal. Costco bought Rwandan coffee for its Kirkland brand, and Sinegal spread the word to Starbucks (Charts). Dub Hay, who is in charge of buying coffee for Starbucks, is encouraging Rwanda growers to ramp up their production: "We're very bullish on Rwanda. They've still got a long way to go, but they're getting there more quickly than any other African country." Hay, Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz and CEO Jim Donald have all visited Rwanda, where they were guests of Kagame.
The Google (Charts) deal came via a different route. Last fall, Francoise Brougher, the global director of strategy and business operations at Google, led a group of Google employees on a three week trip to Africa, stopping in Rwanda, Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria. She had been asked by top Google execs to seek out business opportunities in Africa.
Why? Because Google is serious about its mission - to organize all the world's information and make it available to everyone. The Rwanda deal will make Google Apps - Web-based applications for e-mail, a calendar, the creation of documents and spreadsheets, messaging and Web page authoring - available to government ministries and three colleges in Rwanda. (The company announced a similar initiative in Kenya.) Each university and ministry will get its own domain names, and all the applications will be available without advertising. This will save the Rwandans the considerable expense of developing their own e-mail systems, maintaining servers, training staff and buying PC-based software.
To use Google Apps, Rwandans will need computers and broadband connections - but Brougher told me that Google picked Rwanda for its rollout in part because the government is "extremely progressive" when it comes to promoting information technology: "The country has invested in IT infrastructure, the same way governments invest in roads," she says.
There's lots more in the works. Tom Ritchey, a master designer and welder of mountain bicycles, as well as an accomplished bike racer, has several projects underway in Rwanda. He is developing a racing team and creating an efficient cargo-hauling bike to help coffee growers to market. (Check out his Project Rwanda Web site.) Other U.S. firms are talking about rebuilding railroads and highways. "We're in the deal-making space right now," Cooper says.
There's no doubt that Rwanda has plenty of work to do. Gross domestic product in 2005 was less than $2 billion, and per capita income, adjusted to take the living costs into account, is about $1,500 a year, according to the U.S. State Department. Amnesty International says human rights groups are prevented from working freely in the country and that activists and journalists face harassment and intimidation.
But the country, visitors say, is democratic, peaceful and working hard to heal the terrible wounds caused by the genocide. Roughly half of about 80,000 people who were imprisoned, awaiting trial for their role in the genocide, have been released. In recent years, visitors to Rwanda have included former President Clinton, First Lady Laura Bush, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, former Senate majority leader Bill Frist and (of course) Bono. All expressed a desire to help - perhaps, in part, because the United States did little to prevent the genocide more than a decade ago.
Google's Brougher told me: "For us, it's very inspiring, knowing the history." Says Dan Cooper: "We think this is an extraordinary place that that deserves our support and we feel lucky to be a part of it."
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Saving the world with a cup of yogurt
http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/28/news/companies/pluggedin_Gunther_Rwanda.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007032910

It nearly brought a tear to my eye, This country has suffered so much, Iknow people criticize kagame for being something of a dictator but this guy has for rwanda in ten years what no one has has ever done since indepedence. There is a saying in Kinyarwanda:"Imana y'i Rwanda yirirwa hanze igataha i Rwanda":"the rwandanGod spends his day outside but always go back tosleep in Rwanda"; I hope this business thing is gonna help Rwanda

I am not a CEO and going there this summer

Russengo wrote: So... do you think BOTH Hutus and Tutsis benefit or just YOUR own people?

Hutus and tutsis are my people!? Rwanda and and Burundi are populated by a bantu speaking nation made of hutus who were initially cultivators, tutsis who are cattle herders and twas who are a pygmoid hunting and pot making clan apart from the twa who have a distinctive accent hutus and tutsis both in Rwanda and Burundi speak kinyarwanda and kirundi, there is little physicalif no,especially nowadays, distinction from a hutu or a tutsi but if you are from there you know what's your tribe;so I don't know what you mean!

Rusengo

how come you forgot to mention that they also have a small tribe called the Twa?

And in many parts of Burundi they also speak kiswahili good example is Buyenzi and many areas that border Tanzania

Milesdavis I did mention abatwa as we call them in "kirundi" and to be precise the hutus,tutsis are not really tribes per say because we speak the same language, there is next to no difference in our cultures other than that the tutsis' culture revolves aroundtheir ankole cattle which isthe symbol of beauty,wealth,power and the hutus were cultivators but that's precolonial because a hutu owning a cattle could rise to the rank of tutsi and marry a tutsi woman, atutsi could become aserf for another tutsi then be called a hutuso there has been mixage but you can stilltell most of them like Kagame a typical tutsi phenotype, I mean I can tell!! cause I from there. The batwa on the other hand up to some years ago were parias, untouchables but now there are people trying to change that mentality amongst hutus and tutsis but also within the twa communty as well to enpower them.

By the way Milesdavis how come you know all that? Have you been to BurundiI was born and grew up in the capital Bujumbura, I know Buyenzi very well and it's true that people there speak kiswahili but the majority are muslim families from Tanzania who have lived there for generation, also on the Eastern border you'll find some arabs and muslims too but not that many like in Buyenzi andthe Asian quarter. To be honest with you the average burundian family will not allow their kids to speak swahili in their house because for some posh families it's the language of "working class people with no manners". I used to speak good swahili when I was a kid but as we have one language Kirundi and frenchit's easy to forget. I want to catch up though and speak it like before now that there are swahili courses in UK unies.

Yes Rusengo,

I have been to Rwanda and Burundi several times and last time i was in Bujumbura was during the innaguration of Mr Nkurunziza and you know most of CNDD guys were based in Dar so as a swahili it was really cool being in Buyenzi at that time and meeting up with some people from TZ who were in BUrundi for Business or otherwise outside the Ghadafi mosque. I was with a fact finding group that was headed by our then President (Mwalimu Nyerere) whenhe was mediating for peace in Burundi so we had to build a rapport with both CNDD and FRODEBU and of course the British govt was in a way funding those talks in Arusha and deep down always thought maybe someone like Jean Menani might take over but he didnt. As i said this summer i will be going back home to ZNZ and will also try to make it to Rwanda for couple of days if i can

Russengo wrote: I was just asking because you used to have xenaphobic undertones in regards to certain Africans when we used to correspond back in the day.

Rwanda- landlocked- country-may- soon-become- top-ict-hub- in-africa

http://myafrica. wordpress. com/2006/ 11/01/rwanda- landlocked- country-may- soon-become- top-ict-hub- in-africa/


By Odhiambo Orlale
Nairobi

All public schools in Rwanda are expected to join the information super-highway by the end of next year. Already, half of the primary and secondary schools have embraced the new technology, which has been given priority by the Government under its 2020 vision programme.

Out of 2,300 primary schools, 1,138 have at least one computer each, with 400 secondary schools fully equipped and 39 of them having wireless internet access.

The Rwandese Government has supplied the 400 schools with 4,000 desktop computers and 4,000 power units (UPS), in addition to training 2,000 teachers in basic computing.

The on-going programme includes tertiary and university students, and is part of a national IT policy to make the tiny Great Lakes nation, which is still recovering from the 1994 genocide, a force to reckon with globally. Over 800,000 people were killed in the genocide.

Currently, the land-locked country of eight million people depends heavily on agriculture as its major foreign exchange earner.

But this is expected to change, as Rwanda could soon be the leading ICT-endowed state on the continent. Under the programme launched by President Kagame last year, over 60 per cent of primary and secondary schools have been equipped with hardware and IT instructors.

In the next phase, all urban and rural schools will get the machines, which will be connected to electricity lines, generators or solar power.

More than 400 students have been benefited from full scholarships to study information technology in India, South Africa and the United States. They are expected to graduate and return home to take up civil service jobs to promote the ICT programme.

Dr Shem Ochuodho, the immediate former director of the Rwanda Information Technology Agency, says all ministries have been mandated to appoint ICT directors to promote the programme.

Dr Ochuodho, who is now an ICT advisor to the Ministry of Infrastructure, says each of the 17 ministries is required to spread the ICT gospel.

Earlier, Dr Ochuodho served as MP for Rangwe (1997-2002). He was then appointed by President Kibaki as the managing director of Kenya Pipeline Corporation for over a year.

The new technology has also been embraced by the Rwandese Cabinet, where ministers attend meetings on Wednesdays armed with laptops. The public and the Press are free to log on to the Government website 24 hours later and find resolutions of such meeting posted there.

Unlike in Kenya, the Rwandese Senate and Parliament have a website which is updated daily. A similar proposal for Kenya was shelved last year after a brief test run, following protest and controversy after the media published details of MPs’ academic and professional backgrounds.

But plans are at an advanced stage by Speaker Francis ole Kaparo to officially launch the much-awaited website next month, as part of the Rapid Results Initiative headed by a sub-committee chaired by Mr Harry Owino, a senior systems analyst.

Last year, the national management committee of the Constituency Development Fund launched its website, which shows details of how each of the 210 constituencies received the Sh7 billion kitty, and which projects were supported.

The Rwandese Government wants to cut costs of stationery and boost service delivery to the public. All ministries are inter-connected by fibre optics to cut telephone bills and improve transparency.

The ministers are appointed from the private sector by the President. They are all professionals who must be endorsed by the Senate.

Over 100 ICT directors have been deployed to all the State corporations, and the two chambers of Parliament, the Senate and the Lower House, so far.

Copyright © 2006 The Nation.
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